Could The 2020 Presidential Race Get Any Weirder?

There’s not much that most people like about 2020, which includes, once again, unpopular presumptive candidates for president. So let’s forget what’s currently the case, or even what’s probable. The year is weird enough that anything could happen.

Politico looks at a number of possibilities, such as that Trump will just decide not to run.

One veteran Republican operative, close to many in the GOP’s donor class, said in the past couple weeks it’s been stunning the extent to which people who have some association with Trump are speculating he might drop out of the race. “He doesn’t want to be a loser, and that’s all in jeopardy now,” this strategist said. , ,

Trump has shown in his business career that he is willing to declare bankruptcy and shed liabilities in order to fight again another day. If remaining in the public eye, and perhaps fashioning a path for his children or some other designated political heir to keep the Trump brand alive in coming years, he might calculate that is better to get out early rather than risk a massive repudiation in November.

This writer had thought the same thing. Trump hates to lose. He could simply say he’s a businessman, not a politician; that he did what he came to do, and it’s time to go home. It wouldn’t be unprecedented. LBJ decided not to run. In fact, Sarah Palin walked out right in the middle of her first term, seeing more remunerative options elsewhere. And it would give Trump an excuse for why he couldn’t come up with a cogent answer when Sean Hannity asked him, on air, what he’d do with a second term. He could now say, “When I thought about it, I realized that I’ve done it all!!”

Or Trump could decide to run, but shake things up—by dropping Pence from the ticket.

“He would throw Mike Pence in a wood chipper if he needed to,” said one former White House official who frequently interacted with Trump. “I’m still very surprised that he’s on the ticket. . . if it’s good for Trump, he’ll do it in a second.”

With the bad poll numbers, some candidates blame their campaign manager. We’ve already seen that, with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law, being brought in to oversee yet one more thing.

There is now talk that Trump’s bad numbers might also drag down Senate Republicans. At some point, Mitch McConnell, Senate leader, may “cut his losses.”

“At the end of the day, the Senate majority leader wants to be the Senate majority leader,” said another former senior White House official. “He cares about the Senate, he cares about maintaining that majority, so if that means walking away from Trump at some point, he absolutely will.”

Another thing that would shake things up is if Trump or Biden get a bad case of Covid-19.

if either Trump or Biden were your aging parent in the midst of a pandemic, you would likely urge them to stay home and avoid any unnecessary human contact.

What if Trump loses and tries to destroy the system?

if Trump loses he might disparage the results as tainted by fraud or other irregularities. A former White House official who worked closely with Trump said, “That will be his rationale and for the rest of his life, we’ll never hear anything but, ‘It was stolen.’”

Business Insider says it’s already been a weird year, citing instances in the Democratic primary field. . .

Elizabeth Warren had a beer with her husband alongside her on Instagram Live — and thanked him for being in their own home. . . Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke joked about not being an important part of his own family. . . Sen. Amy Klobuchar told an audience to clap for her when one of her lines fell flat during a CNN town hall. . . South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg was handed an alcoholic drink in a brown bag at a New York City park. . . .Rep. Eric Swalwell compared the Democrats to the heroes from the “Avengers” comic book and the Republicans to the survivalist characters in the “Hunger Games.”
. . . Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper leaned into his centrist platform — and got repeatedly booed. . . Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand awkwardly unwound at a gay bar in Iowa. . . New York City Bill de Blasio spoke of his love of ska music. . .Marianne Williamson told a kid reporter about her cat’s death. . . Buttigieg had a very awkward encounter with a voter in Iowa who said she shook Robert Kennedy’s hand a month before he was assassinated. . . 

Then, there was the day in New Hampshire, when Joe Biden called a voter a “lying dog-faced pony soldier”:

“You ever been to a caucus?” Biden asked the young student, who nervously responded “yes.”

“No you haven’t,” Biden said. “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” he told her, as the audience responded with laughter.

The woman was dumbfounded. Biden later noted that it was a joke from a John Wayne movie. He had used the joke previously in North Dakota. In the movie, an Indian chief doesn’t believe Wayne and delivers the line.

It’s a joke about an old line from and old movie—spoken to a woman two generations younger than he. The audience laughed, probably more from surprise than agreement.

Earlier, we reported that former wrestler and Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura wanted to run on the Green ticket. Now, Kanye West has again said he wanted to run for president, after being a staunch Trump fan, complete with MAGA hat.

No one took him seriously when he announced his run for president during his 2015 VMAs speech, but Kanye West is officially throwing his hat into the ring for the 2020 race. . .

If Kanye “Deez Nutz” West can run for president, [then] anyone can. And technically speaking, as long as you’re a US born citizen over the age of 35, you can run for president. Should you is a different story. But as long as you meet the criteria, it’s easy to fill out a form with the Federal Election Commission and be recognized as an official candidate for office.

Speaking of weird, we hear both sides of the campaign from the same couple—the “Odd Couple” of George and Kellyanne Conway.

Washington may never have seen a marriage quite like the Conways’: Kellyanne, the longtime advisor to President Trump. George, the prolific public tormenter of his wife’s boss.

They are even more bizarre than the matchup of James Carville and Mary Matalin, back in the 1990s.

Carville is best known for his work as the lead strategist on former President Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign. Matalin served as a key strategist for the Republican National Committee under three Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The pair first met in Washington in 1991 while working on their respective campaigns and married two years later in New Orleans, where they still live today, according to a CBS News profile.

That couple inspired a Michael Keaton/Geena Davis movie, Speechless (1994).

If you read our comment sections, you may wonder how some people can exist in the same country—or world—much less in the same house—and bed. But it can be done, apparently.